I must be reading your graphs wrong but it looks like it starts knocking then pulls 3deg but the knock keeps going up even with the timing pull? How much knock have you seen to actually put aluminium on the porcelain of the spark plugs in a piston engine? Cheers

I must be reading your graphs wrong but it looks like it starts knocking then pulls 3deg but the knock keeps going up even with the timing pull? How much knock have you seen to actually put aluminium on the porcelain of the spark plugs in a piston engine? Cheers

Yeah you are reading it wrongly, so instantly it takes out timing then it re introduces it after a certain amount of non knocking cycles, then if it knocks again, which it did then it takes out again and it repeats.

Once you do allot of these as I have you can see that once knock starts the engine is 'hot' and it wont really like the introduction of normal levels of timing but each time it varies! so this is why the ECU manages it.

On most cars I do I let the LR take the engine up to its knock limit, its an automatic process and the ECU does a fantastic job of running each chamber to its limit ALL the time

I am not sure what the delay is from sound generation inside combustion chamber then in air, then through various parts to your inner ear, process in your brain, then motor skills reaction and muscle movement to your leg but I would say well over 150 cycles of the engine would have happened at full revs before you can react.

Never mind that the audible knock/detonation event is much more intense that what I class a a pre ignition event trigger in the Life Racing ECU! So all up on some engine types you can say with 100% accuracy that is you are using knock ears or your own ear than that is about as archaic a method you can employ as a caveman to club a woman over the head for sex in his rape dungeon ............ sure you get the woman but she could be stone cold dead! some I guess it does not matter?

Many more minor events typically happen *unless you are totally wrong in calibration* or have some other part failure well before you get to pre ign or audible detonation, and the whole idea of well set up professional knock control is exactly that, you CONTROL it prior to it becoming a problem.

Never lost an engine on LR or Syvecs with my set up knock control, irrespective of root cause, loss of fuel pressure, poor fuel, some mechanical issue. Even this forum specific like latency of WI delivery say in 1st gear on a car capable of pulling 1.5g acceleration! with huge crank rpm acceleration rates and transient turbo response as per a light switch.

All of these things make it imperative that you run a proven ECU with correct knock control set up well, just my 2 cents on the topic.

Peter,
as I mentioned before I was running a J&S knock controller on my Rover K. Like your ECU, it can pull up to 10 (20 is an other setting for some slow burn chambered motors) of timing within one revolution.
It does this for individual cylinders independent of the other cylinders.

The initial retard is computed from the knock intensity. Ignition timing is then reintroduced by some 2 deg every 10 revolutions or something along the lines.
You can watch this on the gauge. So again, similar to what your ECU does.
I can hear the knock and also hear it disappearing.
Can I react fast enough in case of a catastrophic lean event with my foot? No.
The J&S did that for me. Same for your ECU.
I slowly build up timing and at some point I can start to see knock on the gauge and hear it. Due to the timing regulation of the knock controller, the ticking sound become irregular. It happens, then disappears and then returns. if the timing pull is rather large, you can also feel the power fluctuating. This is then a clear indication that I need to have a look at what's going on.

My ECU did not have all those features integrated, so I added an aftermarket system that provided that functionality.
I for example had fuel starvation in Spa on track with massive misfires. This a typical Elise issues on track once fuel levels drop below some 15l .
Sounded like a machine gun. The J&S did its thing and protected the engine. The gauge lit up like a night club.
Without closed loop knock control, I might have blown the engine.

Overall I am all with you. Ears and feet are not fast enough. Still, I can hear it confirming what the gauge tells me. This not a bad thing.

I know the requirement for fast intervention for a long time and have acted accordingly.
I am not using your particular ECU, witch sounds like it is a nice unit, but a stand alone solution available at the time.
It is not as sophisticated as your ECU, but does its job. No caveman and club to get women here :-) Closed loop fueling (100% of the map) and closed loop knock control.
Never blown an engine since installing the J&S.